


thicker than forget

by openmouthwideeye



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8263915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: Brienne is a shieldmaiden of Tarth, blessed by the gods in battle. But the true test of her strength comes not against warriors or beasts, but in facing the man she left across the sea.





	1. across the aging seas

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, there's no way this is going to end up a oneshot. Locking this down before the collection closes. **JB Week Days 6 &7: longing and love**.
> 
> I've been watching a lot of Vikings and ruminating on historical Westeros. This is not truly either, but something of both. Takes place several hundred years before ASOIAF, before the Targ conquest. 
> 
> *eternal thanks to Isy, my wonderful beta

_Just Maid_ cut through the sea as easily a dirk through leather, flinging salty remnants to crust on her lashes. The ocean’s tears pinched Brienne’s cheek like a scab, reminding her that heartache, not happiness, awaited her on distant shores.

 _Foolish maid_ , she cursed, _better suited to singing than to swords_.

Her shoulders burned with each turn of her oar, sweeping in tandem with thirty of its fellows. It was a pleasant pain, as familiar to her as the salt in her lungs and the pitch of waves frolicking under-keel. _Black Wind_ danced on the edge of sight, as ever, with a dozen and more longships swaying behind. Brienne sat cradled in the _Just Maid’s_ embrace and prayed for the true Maiden to relinquish her to the Warrior’s care. But that was not their way. She had claimed both gods, and so her heart paid them both service. Her heart rose and fell with every sweep of the oars, and the waves beckoned her onward, each crested swell a lantern lit by the Crone to guide her.

They had loosed the ravens, and the ravens had not returned. Land was close at hand.

 _Land,_ her heart sighed, _and Jaime_.

She could scarcely believe that fourteen moons had passed since she last sailed the open seas. Tarth had always been a place of peace, home to poets and craftsmen, but when the ironborn had called upon their sister isle to the east, Evenfall Hall had granted them warriors for the raids. Brienne had joined them not for riches, nor for glory, but for freedom.

 _I would have done better to accept the match_ , she thought. _Humfrey is three moons dead, but I will never return from that raid_.

She’d realized she lacked the Stranger’s heart before she had cleared the prow, but it was too late. The Warrior had done her true, strengthening her arm as the Westermen swarmed. Jaime had come at her as the shield wall buckled, sword biting into her thigh before her elbow took him in the nose, sending him stumbling. His boot turned on the shifting sand, and some mischance sent a knight careening into his back. His blade flew free as he hit the sand. Brienne was astride him in an instant, fingers curling around his throat. Life and death danced together to the battle song around them.

“By the gods,” he choked, “are you a _wench_?”

Her face twisted in fury, and she leaned close to hiss, “I’m a _shieldmaiden_ , earthly daughter of the Maiden and the—”

He bucked. Underestimated her. Snatched an axe from a falling foe. Brienne wrenched it from his grip, and Jaime kneed her back, writhed under her hips, dove for the sheath on her belt, which had already sacrificed its dirk to the bloody sea. At last he collapsed against the sand, spent.

And he laughed. Laughed with a soul-deep mirth that reminded her of home, of her father, of the songs of gallant warriors who went gladly unto death. No Westerman had ever greeted the Stranger so. Her fingers slacked on his throat, wet with blood and sweat, marking him. _But for which god?_ In one fluid motion Brienne rolled onto her feet and dove back into the fray, leaving the Westerman to live or die as the gods saw fit.

 _I have always been a foolish maid_ , she thought, eyes straining as the distant Rock rose up from the sea. Her heart leapt as if she dangled from its precipice.

For the gods had not intended them to part. They were not so kind as that. She stumbled upon him again as Asha’s raiders crested the cliff. Jaime lay slumped against a craggy outcrop beside a bloated corpse, watering the sand from his wrist. And like a fool, she had dropped her weapon and fumbled at his stump, frantic to staunch the life leaking onto the shore.

It was only chance that the blood that stained her fingers was the blood of a king—his firstborn, his golden heir—but that was why, these many moons later, the islanders were afforded this meeting.

Seawater leapt up to kiss her windblown lips, returning, as always, to the ocean’s embrace. _What game are the gods playing_ , she wondered, _and how am I to be a part of it?_

 

* * *

 

Casterly Rock was cavernous, with wide, sweeping archways and meandering halls that could have swallowed Evenfall whole. King Tywin sat upon his throne, face hewn from the stone of his ancestral keep.

“And why should we make terms with pirates who have raided our villages and pillaged our lands?” The rosewood lions peering over his shoulders showed more life than the King of the Rock.

Brienne’s eyes strayed to the pair on King Tywin’s right. They were as alike as twins, graceful and comely, carved by the Smith himself from gold and ivory and other beautiful, bloodless things. She had never met Princess Cersei, but the Jaime she knew belonged in open air, with sunlight in his hair and life in his eyes.

Asha stepped forward, hefting her axe idly. “We have the ships,” she said. “We have the numbers. We have the skill.” She twirled the weapon nimbly before sliding it through her belt, a clean, practiced motion. She smiled under her hawk’s nose. “Yet we do you the honor of treating with you.”

“Do not presume to judge the capabilities of my men,” the king said coldly. Brienne heard the threat: _I could raise an army and dash you to driftwood_. He leaned back on his throne, face inscrutable. “Tell me about this fresh threat.”

“Fresh?” Asha laughed. “Perhaps to you, King Tywin. Dragons have been scorching our earth and gorging on our sheep for years.” She cocked a hip, axe-blade glinting in the torchlight. “We have salt in our blood and iron in our bones. We endure. You won’t.”

 _“What is dead may never die,”_ the ironborn intoned.

Brienne thought King Tywin’s face darkened, but he did not speak.

Asha motioned, and a man brought a chest forward. She placed her boot on the side and heaved it over, spilling bones on the floor. Brienne watched them scatter, feeling queasy.

“A shepherd boy. Or he was, before those beasts took him.”

“Scorched bones,” King Tywin said, unimpressed. “And yet I am to cower before wet nurses’ tales and give a foothold to known enemies?”

Asha had gone somber as the trunk clattered open, but now a smile touched her lips. “Aye, and a place to feed and farm and fuck, too. Qarl,” she demanded, before the king’s obvious disdain could escape his pressed lips. Her lover brought forth another chest, wider and heavier than the first. She picked the lock with her dragonbone dirk, then hefted a gleaming black skull the size of a small sheep, with dark teeth that curved around her hands in a deadly arc.

King Tywin stared, face harder than those iron bones.

“We will speak again on the morrow,” he said, rising from his throne. “Jaime, Cersei, see that the servants prepare rooms for our guests.”

 

* * *

 

Brienne lingered behind a carved stone column, glad for a moment’s respite from the feast. Even in her father’s hall, among friends and warriors she’d known all her life, she scarcely felt anything but uncomfortable at gatherings such as these. But here beyond the sea, penned in by strangers who whispered that she wasn’t merely ugly, but a freak besides? She had never felt so strong an urge to flee.

She watched Will the Stork bob his long neck before Princess Cersei, who inclined her head as if someone held a dagger at her nape. Will’s face soured, but Big Ben Bushy shoved a silver drinking horn into his hand, and soon ale had washed away the perceived slight.

“Wench,” Jaime greeted, breath hot in her ear.

Brienne jerked away, but not before his voice could hum down her spine and twist in her belly. She thought she’d known how she yearned for the sound, but her imaginings had been cold and pale, minnows swept away by a strong current.

“Don’t call me ‘wench,’” she said. “I am a shieldmaiden of Tarth, and a better fighter than any of your _knights_.”

“Shieldmaiden,” he repeated, savoring the word like a warm stew. He slid in front of her, leaning against the column and crossing his arms. The last time they’d met, his right arm had been a bloody, tortured thing, hot with fever and bound in linen from her shift. Now the end of his arm gleamed golden and new. 

“Blessed by the Warrior and the Maiden.” Jaime’s mouth curved, but his smile was brittle, a shield on the edge of splintering. “If we had met in single combat, wench, I could have bested you with my hands chained together. Your gods would have protected you no better than any other.”

She ignored his boast. There was no way to test the truth of it, and to suggest it would be cruel.

“You know the Seven,” she said instead, surprised.

His smile sharpened, forged anew of the Westermen’s hard, strong steel. “The Seven. The Merling King. Him of Many Faces.” His right arm flexed, and she couldn’t help but admire the cords of strength beneath his skin, snaking up his forearm and into his shoulder.

 _The Warrior made flesh_ , she thought, and banished the image before the Crone could pluck it from her mind and feed it to the crows.

“I had a god once,” Jaime admitted, eyes flicking to his false hand. They reflected the gold, curling up like an autumn leaf dying among its brethren. She had come to know those eyes like the forests of Tarth, hoarded them like emeralds in a dark, dank cave, while she struggled to keep the light in them alive.

“And now?” she whispered.

“Now?” He raised his head, eyes fixed beyond their little shadowed alcove.

Brienne knew who she would find if she turned her head. Cersei Lannister was as lovely as sunrise, as golden as noonday sun. Beside her, Brienne was pale predawn.

Jaime’s smile bit into the soft flesh of her heart. “Now I have a kingdom. And a wife.”

 

* * *

 

Brienne closed her eyes, but the Mother refused to kiss her lids and grant her respite. She lay in her borrowed featherbed, stiff as a battle-axe, nocked and crusted with blood, likely to fragment at the first poor parry. The wound Jaime had given her had long since turned to milk-silver, but tonight it felt fresh and tight on her thigh.

If she slowed her mind and made her breathing shallow, she could imagine she was still at sea, rocked by the steady rhythm of the waves and dreaming that when she arrived, Jaime might slip into her rooms and—

The door creaked, spilling a golden trail onto the rushes. A figure slipped inside, tall and faceless in the dark.

“Say what you will for these mainlanders; I haven’t eaten so well since I was a babe in arms.”

Dacey. Brienne shifted to make room as her bedfellow stumbled into a chair, stripping off her shoes and her woolen dress.

“Nor drunk so well, either,” Dacey added, her laughter breathy and free.

“The food was rich,” Brienne conceded, though she had hardly tasted it. “The wine was sweet.”

Dacey crawled into bed, and soon she was snoring softly. Brienne spent the night whispering prayers to the Crone that her oars might forget the way home. By the time she drifted to sleep, the owl hooted his hour in the darkness.

 

* * *

 

 King Tywin did not need long to ruminate. He announced the alliance after no more than a day of quiet council. Servants brought forth chests laden with wools and grains to build up the voyagers’ new lands, and Princess Cersei bestowed gleaming treasures on the captain of each vessel. Asha curbed her tongue long enough to present the royal family with the dragon’s skull as reparation for their raids; a valuable boon, but not so valuable as knowledge. Soon enough King Tywin would have that, too.

The feasting lasted well into the night. When Brienne slipped away, only Big Ben Bushy noticed, snorting something unflattering into his wine cup before Dacey coaxed him into a dance.

Jaime found Brienne wandering the Hall of Heroes, seeking comfort amongst the noble dead. There were songs about them, she was sure, painting each a god as golden and fearless as the scion she knew.

“So many bones,” she murmured, studying cracked shields and gleaming hauberks atop sarcophagus after sarcophagus. Some armor had faded with age, while others still bore evidence of their owners’ bloody ends.

 _Bones and blood_ , she thought, _like the weirwoods of Bear Island._

“Some believe that unguarded bones will rise to fight during the Long Night,” she said. Bear Islanders did not release their dead to the sea, but interred them with swords and axes, much as these mainlanders did.

“That must be why you send yours so far off.” Jaime laughed. “Have no fear, wench. The dead have quite a climb if they think to swarm us in our beds. And if they do, well, there are the caves along the coast.” A strange look touched his face. “Death would not dare follow us there.”

His voice echoed in her memory, babbling Cersei’s name like a benediction as he lay fevered and insensate on the cave floor. The heat of him beside her now was a flame in winter, drawing her closer even as it drove shards into her flesh.

She stepped abruptly away.

“Dacey will wonder where I’ve gone,” she lied.

“Oh?” He had learned her, too, in the days after his fever had burned out, before she had been brave enough to trust his strength to travel.

 _Too craven to see him go_ , she admitted to herself. Now she was too craven to stay.

But Jaime did not press her lie. He reached out with his good hand as if she were an adder poised to strike, dangerous and strangely captivating. His palm slid across her hip, lighter than seaspray. Brienne felt it only in the _scritch_ of wool on skin, but she was caught fast. His body was familiar by necessity, but his touch was something wholly new.

“Stay, my lady.” Clearing his throat, Jaime let his hand fall as he mustered a lazy smile. “Tell me about these dragons.”

Torches flickered off hauberks and marble as far as the eye could see, and glinted in the gold of his hair. She did not know if the Crone lead her toward Jaime or away.

 _This will be a memory soon_ , she realized, _stored in jars beside the others._

Brienne stayed.


	2. a hard place to fall

Three ships departed with the tide, bearing missives for Evenfall Hall and Pyke and Mormont Keep. With the Seven’s blessing, they would return within a moon’s turn with farmers and craftsmen, spouses and children. When Brienne entrusted Will with a message for her father, Asha sent her a saucy wink and ordered Dacey aboard _She-Bear_ in her mother’s stead.

“These royal featherbeds may be large, but I’d wager Brienne has tired of your snoring.”

It wasn’t Dacey who snored, but her sister Alysane, already aboard the grizzled ship. But before Brienne could say so, Dacey had waded into the gray-green sea to trade places with her mother.

_I will not winter here_ , Brienne vowed. There would be other voyages before the days grew short and bitter, other tides steering vessels home.

Asha grabbed Qarl by the front of his breeches, leading him back to the castle. Maege sloshed ashore and hiked after them, pack slung across her shoulders. Brienne stood alone on the sand, buffeted by the wind rolling off the seas. The longships swept toward the horizon until the ironborn’s god seemed to swell up and swallow them whole.

 

* * *

 

Brienne walked the battlements beside Jaime in the grey predawn, assessing the best way to bolster their defenses. They had not yet slept, but Brienne felt fresher than she had in months. Jaime listened attentively when she spoke, argued loudly when he disagreed, and called her a “stupid, stubborn swordswench” every breath in between.

“The catapults must be protected,” Brienne insisted. “Dousing the wood in vinegar does nothing against dragonfire.”

It was the smallfolk she feared for, not those inside the fortress, but King Tywin demanded that they secure the Rock. If they could not, the ironborn’s land was forfeit.

“It sounds like _nothing_ will do a bloody thing against dragonfire,” Jaime groused, sidestepping the guards and disappearing into a turret.

Brienne huffed, following. “If you refuse to trust our expertise, this alliance has no—”

He swallowed her words. His mouth was hot, unyielding, as he prised her lips apart and delved into her mouth, scattering her wits to the wind. Her blood coursed with a thrill she knew from battle; it struck her heart and she was lost. Her back scraped the wall, hair catching on the crumbling mortar, and she clutched him to her as if it might break, thrusting her into open air.

“ _Jaime_ ,” she gasped when he freed her, but he wasn’t finished. His lips found her chin, where saltwater had painted his name more than once, and danced down the curve of her neck. Heat sprouted where his lips planted kisses, rooting deep inside her. When Jaime spoke, the words thrummed in her throat as if they were her own.

“This alliance has no worth?” His mouth curved on her skin. His hands, both flesh and gold, dug trenches in her hips. “No future? I disagree.”

The sound that escaped her was downright shameful, but some other woman had taken hold of her, tangling fingers in goldspun hair, dragging him up to meet her. Waves crashed against the cliffs far below, and her heart echoed the sound, dashed to pieces against her ribcage. She anchored herself in the wicked heat of him pressing her against the stone.

Through the endless days asea, the Crone had steered her true. Jaime was here, and alive, and hers.

_No._ The thought was a stone, plunging through the tumult in her gut. _Not mine._

Brienne shoved him roughly away. The briny air swept away his touch, steeling her for battle. “Have you no honor?”

His face darkened—hair mussed, mouth ravaged. By _her_.

“No more than you. Or did I dream the ugly maiden sighing in my arms?”

Sickness clawed at her throat, but she forced it down. The taste of him clung to her lips. “You are _wed_ ,” she snapped. “Do your oaths mean so little?”

“My oaths?” He barked a laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Why should my oaths mean more than my cousin’s?”

“You swore before gods and men— ”

“ _Yes_ ,” he cut her off, “as did my sweet wife.”

His eyes drove her back against the unforgiving stone. _Cersei_ , her memory pled, _please, Cersei, don’t go_. Her boots edged sideways, back scraping the wall.

His voice became low, dangerous. “From the time I was a boy, I never looked at another woman. I had a betrothed—a wife—who else could I want?”

Despite herself, the words made Brienne flinch.

“She stopped hiding her treachery after _this_.” Fumbling at the straps that bound his false hand, he ripped them free and thrust his stump at her. Her left shoulder snagged painfully on an arrow slit, and she lurched to a halt, staring.

“Why should I keep my vows when she cares so little for hers?” His eyes flashed, hotter than dragonfire, consuming her. “The woman I wed is as false as my hand.”

“Was she untrue?” The question was no more than a breath, but a demand all the same.

Jaime opened his mouth in a fury . . . and the anger seeped out of him. His false hand clattered to the floor; his shoulders slumped as if he might follow. “Untrue. Yes. That is one real thing I know.”

His stump jerked toward her unbidden, as if he might slip past her defenses before she thought to recoil. And just like that, her defenses shattered. _Foolish woman_ , she thought, stepping into him. His scarred wrist stuttered along her waist; wrapped fast around her. Brienne went willingly, unable to bear the look in his eyes. His other arm enfolded her roughly, seeking absolution, not comfort.

She closed her eyes, listening to waves collide far below. Something in her yearned to be tossed aboard the _Just Maid_ and released to sea, dreaming of these arms she couldn’t claim instead of swept up in them. The other part hoped that when she died in battle, it would be these arms, not the Stranger’s, that carried her to the Father above.

 

* * *

 

Princess Cersei did not deign to acknowledge Brienne, even when she stumbled into a serving woman beside the royal table, distracted by the sudden fervor in Jaime’s eyes.

“Excuse me,” she gasped, fleeing to the farthest table, where Asha found her and shoved a drinking horn into her hand.

“The more daring the raid, the sweeter the gold tastes on the tongue.” Asha clinked her goblet to Brienne’s horn, spilling wine like blood on their hands. She laughed, licking a swipe first from her fingers, then Brienne’s. Brienne jerked away, and Asha laughed again.

“Qarl and I can lure the golden princess to our bed,” she offered, taking a swill. Her eyes watched Brienne over the rim. “Give me a quarter hour.”

“No!” Brienne coughed as wine caught in her throat. She didn’t know if it was the Father’s judgement she feared, or the look in Jaime’s eyes when his wife slipped from their chambers. He keened inside her head. _Cersei, don’t go!_

Brienne went instead, slipping up to her borrowed bedchambers. Jaime watched her leave. The look in his eyes stayed with her until dawn crested the churning sea.

 

* * *

 

Monsters dogged the heels of the _Sea Bitch_ when she limped into the harbor, laden with stonemasons from Pyke. _She-Bear_ came roaring after, belching smoke, but the ash swallowed any signs of movement.

_Not Dacey_ , Brienne thought. _Not Alysane, or her daughters_.

Maege tore through the ranks, axe whirling. She danced onto an outcrop to slice a dragon’s wing as it circled toward her ship. _Towards her daughters._ The line shattered. It made no matter. A shield wall was useless against dragonfire.

The pale dragon screamed, writhed, spraying Brienne with blood as soft and warm as summer rain. Acrid drops fell on her tongue as she gaped at the sky. A figure sat astride that cream-and-gold beast, wrought in silver and white. Brienne blinked, sure sweat blurred her vision.

_A sunburst, that’s all it is. A shimmer of light on scales_.

Pale arms slithered around the dragon’s neck, and the creature launched skyward, wheeling towards the sun.

“Riders!” Brienne shouted. It was madness.

Hearkened by her call, a dozen mounted knights formed a ragged line. A dark dragon shrieked death. Mounts reared, screamed, bolted, and those horsed found themselves flat on their backs or carried off.

_You don’t understand_ , she wanted to scream, but there was no time. The black beast charged. Brienne threw herself to the sand. Razor-sharp talons sliced neatly through a lock of hair as it barreled over her. Flaxen strands swirled almost whimsically through the air, a hatchling’s spring feathers shed for a hardier coat.

Brienne lurched to her feet, fist tight on her sword hilt. Her shield was singed and burning, flames licking greedily toward the sunburst boss. She flung it aside, snatching a fallen axe. Her stomach turned at the stinking, smoking mess beside it, but she grit her teeth and ran.

Three dragons converged on the ships, shedding arrows, bellowing fire. They twisted, dove, danced away. Only one bore a rider. _A scout_. If the defenders sent only one beast to greet the Stranger this day, it had to be that one.

“Take down the rider!”

Screams of fury and fear swallowed her plea. Aboard _Sea Bitch_ , the ironborn loosed flaming quarrels, but _She-Bear_ had begun to founder. Maege dove, shield bobbing on the waves like a frozen corpse.

Brienne clutched her weapons in sweat-slicked hands. The pale scout pulled back, favoring its injured wing. One of its brothers landed on _She-Bear_ , snapping its mast in monstrous talons before launching back into the sky. Brienne scanned the air between beasts and sea, searching, searching . . .

_There_. Shoving her sword into its sheath, she sprinted for the low cliff. Her teeth clamped down on her axe handle. Propelling herself to a low jut of stone, Brienne began to climb. Dragonfire seared the air, sizzling in her ear. Each roar doused her in a fresh wave of fear; she could _feel_ those teeth, poised to snap her in two. She hauled herself up the cliff, fingers stiff and bleeding, teeth aching from the weight of her axe.

A familiar laugh caught her ear through the cacophony. _Jaime_. Her foot slipped, chin scraping the unforgiving cliff face. Her teeth bit scars into the wood of her axe.

The pale beast swooped past the cliff, diving for the ground.

_A cripple should not lead the charge_ , Cersei had said, glowering at her husband as soldiers milled around them. Brienne wished she had not heard what came after—soft, pleading. _Jaime, don’t go_.

She hauled herself higher to the cadence of his taunts. Heat blazed, turning her heart cold. The cream-and-gold dragon dipped in her periphery. Wrenched skyward. Brienne scrambled to the top of the cliff and whirled.

The battle stuttered and steadied, meeting her eyes. Jaime stood on blackened sand, waving his blade and shouting indistinct threats. The rider tugged his dragon out to sea, but the creature balked, hissing smoke at the gleaming prince on the sand. Warriors and knights swirled on shore and sea until Brienne could not tell which was which, holding the black beast at bay. Of the green, there was no sign.

Turning deliberately away, she set her sights on the gold-and-cream. _If I send only one to the Stranger, it must be this one._ Ripping her sword from its scabbard, she gripped her weapons until she thought her knuckles might split. Gathering her legs beneath her, Brienne sprinted toward open air. _One step, two steps, three—_

She leapt. The sea glittered beneath her, strangely peaceful in the morning light, like a tapestry from her father’s hall, woven silver and blue. She hung on air, caught on a breath. The wind sighed, blowing hair over her ears in a ticklish caress.

Her neck snapped as she slammed into the beast. Her sword splintered, spraying her with steel. The iron in her fist _screeched_ as it clawed for purchase. Her axe caught a wing-joint and Brienne jerked sideways, shoulder blazing. The useless sword leapt towards the sea. Brienne gasped, dangling by her axe. The beast screamed. She swung ponderously—once, twice, gathering momentum—and heaved her body upward. Fingers and feet scrabbled on the slick scales, desperate for purchase.

“Ñuhor līr gūrēnna,” the pale woman shouted. “Viserion—”

The dragon roared, reared, and when her axe jerked free, so did Brienne. All around her was blue and white, sea and sky and sunlight. Dark flecks spotted her vision, and the wind howled its fury through a rushing waterfall.

“ _Wench. Wench!_ ”


	3. broken days in between

A war drum hammered inside her temple. Each slosh of blood felt like seawater gushing into an open wound. When Brienne moved, pain stabbed the mist around her, until she thought she must lay on a bed of spiked maces. Her muddled mind squinted, focused, narrowing the pain to her ribs, her head, and the nettles deep in her arm.

Light split her skull when she peeled her eyes open. Yellow and black blurred together, resolving into a god come to carry her to the Father.

“Is this what it takes to be a swordswench?” Jaime’s voice was raw, his face haggard.

_He fought the Stranger for me,_  came her delirious thought.

“The Maiden must be hard to please. The Warrior would’ve taken you with your feet firmly planted.” His smile was tight, sardonic. She could imagine no sight more welcome.

“Did we drive them off?” she croaked, wincing as the words tore her throat.

“No thanks to you. We nearly had two beasts dead in the sand, instead of three fled and one dying in a featherbed.”

“I didn’t—”

“Die?” he cut her off. “Not for lack of trying.”

“—kill her?”

Jaime shoved back from the bed. Her arm went cold to the elbow, and she realized dimly that he’d been cradling it. “Was the beast a warrior wench, too? We weren’t all able to gape at her cunt. Perhaps you thought to greet the Stranger together? A pair of thick-headed she-beasts to make gargoyles for his keep.”

Tears pricked her eyes, but Brienne grit her teeth, pushing up the pillows. Pain lumbered up her ribs, curling around her temple and clawing at her bones. Bile stained her throat, hissing as it burned.

“Not the dragon. The rider.”

Jaime stared at her, uncomprehending.

“It had a rider.” Her tongue felt thick and heavy, her mind sluggish. “The dragon,” she said again. “It had a rider.”

She watched him watch her in the flickering light of the tapers, brow furrowed. _Is he stunned, or does he think me mad?_

“So you thought to get acquainted?” he said at last.

Wedging her legs beneath her, Brienne shoved herself upright. The room swam, and tears leaked onto her cheeks, burning cuts she couldn’t see. She collapsed against the pillows.

“It was a _scout,"_  she snapped. “Jaime, the attacks on Tarth, the Iron Islands, the Westerlands . . . the dragons are harrying forces.”

Jaime sank down beside her, grasping her good arm in a bruising grip. She welcomed it as she welcomed the burn of rope during a sudden ocean squall.

“Then we’ll protect the bloody catapults. But the next time there’s a dragonrider you wish to dance with, make her come to you.”

His mouth curved, wry and familiar, but his eyes implored her as no one ever had. Feathers shifted beneath him, pressing him against her thigh. A flush crawled up her skin, over her hip and torso to climb past her linen shift. Brienne jerked a nod, and his fingers relaxed on her arm.

A sharp rap sounded at the door. She froze. Jaime rose quickly, stepping back from the bed. Before she could call out, King Tywin strode into the sick room, his niece resplendent on his heels.

“Good,” he said when he saw her, “you’re awake.”

Princess Cersei eyed her with such disdainful amusement that Brienne shrunk into her pillows. “Husband,” she said, turning deliberately, “one might think it was _you_ who fought the dragon. You look as wan and wasted as our valiant lady warrior.” Her tongue twisted the epithet into mockery. “Did you not find your bed last night?”

Jaime’s face hardened, though for the insinuation that he’d abandoned his marriage bed, or that she had, Brienne did not know.

“He _did_ fight a dragon,” she told his wife. “He distracted the beast so I could reach higher ground.”

Cersei met her eyes, incredulity writ plain on her lovely face. The words dried on Brienne’s tongue.

“He fought bravely,” the king cut in, before his niece could voice her outrage, “as always. We’ve more important matters to discuss.” He settled into the chair at Brienne’s bedside, cool as stone. Jaime insinuated himself beside her pillows, arms crossed casually, and Cersei rearranged her skirts with a short, irritated flick. The king pinned Brienne against the headboard with a stare wrought of dragonbone. “Lady Brienne, you alone have see these beasts, touched them. Tell me: what vulnerabilities have you discovered?”

“They fear hulking shieldmaidens no more than they fear crippled princes,” Cersei mused. “Elsewise you might have slain one.”

The king’s eyes flicked across her face, as sharp as a blow. His niece fell silent, mouth tight.

Brienne’s scalp prickled as heat crashed over, a wave yanking her feet from the sand.

She swallowed. “R-riders.” The king raised an eyebrow and she swallowed again, harder. “Your Grace, the dragon carried a rider, else I would never have . . .” Words fled before King Tywin’s implacable stare.

“Riders?” he repeated flatly. “Several of my knights have spread these foolish tales, but the Greyjoy girl swears it’s no more than fear turning their eyes with mummer’s tricks.”

She rushed to get the words out before his stare could sear them from her mouth. “No, Your Grace. On Tarth, we fight dragons with range weapons, or hack at their bellies when they swoop for prey. I’ve never seen a rider until . . .” How many days had passed since her fall? Her linen shift smelled rank and stale, and gold dusted Jaime’s cheeks in the flickering light of the taper.

“I see.”

Silence fell like a warhammer.

Finally King Tywin stood. “Jaime, gather Captain Marbrand and a handful of Greyjoy’s best. Trustworthy men—none of those reaving dogs. Cersei, fetch your Uncle Kevan. We must determine a strategy for quelling these invaders. Lady Brienne, you will join us when you are able.” He did not even glance at her before striding from the room. Princess Cersei spared her a sour look before following on his heels.

Alone with Jaime but for shadows and the stink of sick, Brienne could almost imagine they were back in that cave, inextricably tangled in threads of animosity and fear and fledgling respect. Her breath hitched as his hand reached for her; fell.

“I’ll send for the maester,” he muttered and strode away, leaving her alone with her wounds.

 

* * *

 

“Some of the lads’ve put you in a song,” Asha told her, falling into the chair and propping her legs on the bed. The maids had finally allowed Brienne a bath, and the water had sapped her strength, leaving her weak as a day-old foal, but Asha didn’t mind. “Beauty Fells the Beast, they’re calling it, though I’m not rightly sure which is which.”

Brienne winced. When she’d first joined the ironmen, they’d dubbed her “The Beauty” until she forced them to defend their words with steel. They still snickered the name when in their cups.

Asha rolled her eyes. “Why is it that men can’t praise a woman’s honor without bringing their cocks into it?”

Brienne did not want to think about men, or what they whispered behind her back. She turned the conversation to harder questions.

“Dacey? Alysane and the girls?” Other names rose in her chest, Will and Tris and Qarl, but the words stuck in her throat.

Shadows dusted Asha’s gaiety in a layer of ash. “The girls are healing in a dreary room like this one, and Alysane splits her time tending them and threatening the maester. Dacey’s gone to meet her gods.”

The candle at Brienne’s bedside guttered with her heart. She remembered Dacey breathing beside her in the dark, her ringing laughter, the graceful dance of her mace on the battlefield.

_Her gods protect her now._  The thought should have been a comfort, but Brienne felt cold. _Dacey never snored._  A senseless thought.

“The _Just Maid?”_ she asked at last.

“Hasn’t made port. Might be it foundered, might be the dragons blew it off course. Time will tell.”

Dropping her boots to the rushes, Asha scooted her chair closer. “Tris claims you danced with the Drowned God and won, but your royal admirer swears it was a dragonrider you wanted.”

Brienne almost snapped at her to listen to her ironmen’s song, if she was so eager for more bloodshed, but she kept the words at bay. It was not for herself that Asha asked.

Brienne started the tale slowly, fumbling through numb lips as she recounted Maege’s struggle to reach her daughters. She fought for details that had blurred into battle-haze; they slunk unwillingly to her lips to fall on Asha’s ears. When she got to the attack on the dragonrider, Asha laughed.

“A hard face and a harder spine. You could have been ironborn, Brienne, if it weren’t for that tender heart of yours.”

Brienne didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

“Theon arrived with his _Sea-Bitch,_  did I tell you? He’s been moaning that it’s not too late to raid the Rock and keep pillaging inland.” Asha scoffed. “Not too bloody late, with the land smoking around us and this pretty fortress overhead to keep dragonfire at bay.”

Brienne’s stomach lurched. “King Tywin . . .” He did not seem the sort to forgive.

“I should let little Theon face King Tywin,” Asha grumbled. “That would teach him to curb his tongue.”

Brienne shifted up, propping her shoulders on the pillows. “Surely the king wouldn’t dishonor our treaty for empty boasts.”

“My brother’s boasts aren’t empty, just bloody stupid,” Asha said. She rested her weight on her forearms, leaning in. “Your princeling had a brother, I hear.”

Brienne gaped at her. “A brother?”

“Even the servants look over their shoulders when they speak of him, like King Tywin’s just waiting to have them drawn and quartered. The princess had him banished on some thin pretext, and the king was amenable enough, though the boy had no fault but being a dwarf, as far as I can tell.”

Dimly, Brienne recalled Jaime calling a name in his fever, a name that wasn’t _Cersei._  Try as she might, she couldn’t shape the syllables into sense.

“Jaime didn’t want him to go,” she realized.

Asha shrugged, leaning back. “As to that, you’d have to ask your pretty prince. I’d offer to fetch him for your bedside, but the real trick would be keeping him away.” She waggled her eyebrows. “If the princess weren’t so full of the sight of her own tits, I’d command you to sleep with a dirk.”

A flush swept over Brienne, bile rising like the tides. “We only—You don’t—”

Asha laughed, pushing to her feet. “—need to know more? I’ll give you that.” She gave Brienne a jaunty salute. “Tonight our raiders get roaring drunk in your honor, Warrior’s Maid.” She tossed a wineskin on the bed, so full it scarcely sloshed. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Brienne wondered how many times the Rock would echo “Beauty Fells the Beast” before another tune took its place.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is love.


End file.
